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07 Feb 2011 11:22

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Tech: Gawker finally moves over to that bold redesign they have

  • Oh, hey new Gawker: In case anyone needed a reason to go to Gawker today, here you go. Compared to previous iterations of the redesign, the kickers in front of the topics help a lot. They weren’t there before, making everything sort of blend into one another. Still, though, we think this is a huge mistake on Gawker’s part. By downplaying what made Gawker worthwhile (the snarky blurbs over to the right), they endanger their base. Good luck, though. source

16 Jan 2011 15:02

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Politics: Despite large-scale attack, Gawker stays on the 4chan beat

  • Here’s what we like about Gawker: Despite getting their asses handed to them by a group that reportedly had indirect ties to 4chan (and made note in their attack of the site’s criticism of 4chan), they don’t back down. A feature headline on Gawker’s front page? “4chan Is Not Very Scary In Real Life.” Mend those fences, Gawker Media, mend those fences. source

15 Dec 2010 11:09

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Tech: Major sites force password changes after Gawker’s security lapse

  • action A bunch of hacker thugs who we’d turn in if we knew who they were leaked over a million Gawker usernames and passwords online. We hate those guys.
  • reaction Other sites, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo, have asked large swaths of users to change their passwords, which is pretty smart, guys. source

14 Dec 2010 11:15

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Tech: FBI investigating Gawker hack. We hope they catch the jerks.

  • The kind of attention we got – which spiked Gawker.com traffic – is the kind we can do without.
  • Gawker founder Nick Denton • Noting that there’s actually a kind of traffic Gawker doesn’t like. You know, the kind that comes after an embarrassing hack to one’s Gibson. By the way, the FBI is (thank God) actually investigating the hack, which is good, because even though Gawker screwed up big time here, the level of evil that Gnosis showed was beyond the pale. Look, you don’t like Gawker, so what. Don’t punish their users. We hope the jerks that did this go to jail for a really long time. source

13 Dec 2010 21:07

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Tech: The WSJ did a breakdown of the most-used Gawker passwords

Dear morons: Don’t give your account the password of “123456,” “password,” “12345678,” or name it after the site you’re visiting. It’s just a bad idea. source

13 Dec 2010 10:47

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Tech: Great. Gawker’s leak may have led to large-scale Twitter attack

  • bad Gawker’s data – tons of it, from images to user passwords to database files to worse – was uploaded by a couple of axe-grinding bad eggs on Bittorrent last night. Great. Thanks, jerks!
  • worse It appears that someone may have taken the passwords from the torrent and used them to turn Twitter accounts into Acai Berry-pitching spambots. CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS, STAT. source

12 Dec 2010 21:11

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Tech: Hackers: Gawker used very outdated form of password encryption

  • yeah … Gawker staffer Scott Kidder claimed that users’ passwords should be safe from hacking. “Passwords are encrypted anyway,” he says, “so stealing passwords isn’t even possible.”
  • … but A document from the hackers in their bittorrent explains that the passwords used a very outdated form of encryption that only protected the first eight characters. Yikes. Freaking yikes. source
 

12 Dec 2010 20:27

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Tech: An open letter to the dudes who hacked Gawker Media

  • Gawker is a site that’s easy to hate, we know this. We’re sure that plenty of people were taking lots of joy in Nick Denton’s misery today. But the thing that bothers us about that stance is that, as harsh as Gawker and Denton come across sometimes, they prove they’re worth their weight in salt every time they get a scoop. When it comes to the Web, nobody tops them, honestly.
  • why they’re uniqueThey’re not afraid of taking on the tawdry story because it’s tawdry. They’re not afraid of paying a source because it requires paying a source. They’re not against digging into rumors just because they’re rumors. And they know just when to play each of those hands.
  • Why they matterAs much as we’d like to hate Gawker and its sister sites for being the most arrogant content network on the entire internet, every time we want to hate them, they do something really freaking cool. They make reading the news online worthwhile, ’cause they get it.
  • They hate you? So what? Gawker talks crap about 4chan or Anonymous or whomever? So what. They talk crap about everybody. And they deserve to get away with it. Because unlike the gossip sources of yore (think National Enquirer), they actually have substance. source
  • » Oh yeah: One thing we cannot and will not get behind is making a million and a half commenters pawns in this silly game. Gawker may deserve it (to some degree), but the readers aren’t worth getting crapped on. We feel bad for them more than anyone else in this endeavor.

20 Nov 2010 21:10

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Politics: Lame: Sarah Palin’s book excerpts disappear from Gawker

  • obviously Days before the release of Sarah Palin’s second book, “America By Heart,” Gawker gets an early copy and posts a bunch of pages online. Palin freaks out.
  • laaaame Palin’s publisher, HarperCollins, decided to sue the boys at Gawker, and forced an injunction earlier today. Which means that Gawker had to take it down. source

29 Oct 2010 23:08

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Politics: Gawker’s Christine O’Donnell shaming rationale: She’s hypocritical

  • No, we don’t think there’s anything wrong with what Christine O’Donnell did on Halloween three years ago. We think there’s something wrong with what she’s done every day since, though. And we’re happy to expose the hypocrisy.
  • A post from “The Staff of Gawker.com” • Explaining their rationale for the Christine O’Donnnell one-night stand piece. While one might consider this a fair rationale (and there’s a lot of explanation here backing up their point), we’re not so sure. Who does it benefit to inform the world of this woman’s grooming options? And like we said earlier, it’s not like this is going to change anything. O’Donnell is already unpopular among voters. Know when to pick your battles, Gawker Media. The iPhone 4 thing was impressive, and a perfect example of when your paying-for-stories method almost kinda works. The Brett Favre thing, while not particularly classy, came at the nadir of his popularity and made sense from an coverage standpoint. This just feels wrong, and dirty. source